Fun with guest posts
Fun with guest posts is a wordpress plugin that makes it easier to advertise posts you have written on other blogs.
What it does
The plugin automates some of the guest post publicising process by:
- Adding a guest post URL option to the bottom of the post page;
- Swapping the content of the post for the optional excerpt ( so the full post is not displayed, but remains searchable );
- Adding a short note after the excerpt suggest the reader visits the site to read the full content.
- Adding an additional theme tag to allow customisation.
Wordpress Versions
It has been tested on Wordpress 2.2 and 2.3 but it should work on 2.0+
Installing
Download the plugin, extract the zip into the plugin directory, activitate the plugin through the plugin admin page.
Using
Once activited the write and edit post screens will have an additional advanced option, beneath custom fields, called guest post options. Enter the full address that your post / article has been published at (inlcuding http://) in this field.
You should include the full content of the post in the content section. This will not be shown to visitors but it will mean that the full contents can be search against on your blog.
Finally make sure to enter some introductory text in the optional excerpt field. This will be displayed on guest posts instead of the main content, even if it is empty, with an additional link added to it to direct readers to the website where the full version has been published.
There is also an additional function that you can use to customise your theme.
is_guest_post() can be used to check if the post has been guest posted. It also returns the URL it has been guest posted to. Example:
[php]
if ( $guest_url = is_guest_post() ) {
echo 'This post has been published at '.$guest_url;
}
Versions
Version 1.1.1
Updated to work with WordPress 2.7 – A very minor change to the text box width on the post page so that it will fit in either column if the box is moved.
Version 1.1
Updated to work with WordPress 2.5